Understanding your finances

Is your farm business healthy?

A lack of financial knowledge can lead to bad business decisions and poor outcomes, so it’s very important to learn your business finances and understand how well it’s performing financially. This knowledge will increase the chances of making your business viable and sustainable. There are primarily three financial reports from where you get essential financial information of your business which includes;

• Profit & loss statement, that tells you how much money you are making or how much you’re losing
• Balance sheet/ Statement of Position which depicts a financial health of business at a given moment in time particularly what it owns and what it owes
• Budget/cash flow forecast helps you tracking flow of cash moving in and out of the business account in future

The information produced from your financial statements can assist you in evaluating your current business financial position and if there are any changes required to improve financial strategies. For example, modify and improve your cash flow, review your debt structure, loan terms and consider refinancing, review your cash flow budget, consider government assistances etc.

Our Rural Financial Counsellors will help you to determine your business’ financial health, explore and identify options to improve the financial self-sufficiency, setting up goals, help developing a business plan whether it’s for profitability, business expansion, succession planning, or even selling the business. 

A fundamental outcome of the Rural Financial Counselling Program is to ensure that  you enhance your skills of understanding crucial numbers, provide better insight of financial reports and learn the process of improving business position by using the performance indicators that help assess your farm financial health, direct you to plan effectively & manage your cash flow for a successful and profitable farm business.